The National Center for Advancing Translation Science has an open funding opportunity for examining Ethical Issues in Translational Science Research. The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement is to support collaboration between bioethicists, legal scholars, social scientists, and translational research scientists. The focus is to develop knowledge to inform the ethical development, modification, or application of novel findings, technologies, and approaches to improve human health, including their impact on individuals, families, communities, and society.

Have you ever wondered how best to measure medication nonadherence? Medication nonadherence is one of the health behaviors with the strongest influence on chronic disease outcomes. Yet, there is no single gold-standard approach for its measurement. This webinar will review the findings from a recent Delphi survey of medication adherence experts focused on eliciting best practices for assessing medication adherence in behavior change research.

Join us for a video lecture and discussion on December 16th, from 2-3pm EST.

The Annual NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival will be hosted by OBSSR and the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee. The purpose of the festival is to highlight recently funded behavioral and social sciences research that the NIH supports; bring together behavioral and social scientists within the NIH extramural and intramural communities to network with each other and share scientific ideas; and explore ways to advance behavioral and social sciences research.

Transparent and open science practices are increasingly valued by research funders, academic journals, and the public. Increased research transparency has potential to increase research rigor, reproducibility, and access. This webinar will discuss three approaches to increase transparency in the research process: study pre-registration; open access data; and registered report publications. For each of these three topics, we will provide an overview of recommended practices; describe potential challenges to implementing these practices and possible ways to address these challenges; and provide resources for further learning. Study pre-registration is currently required for clinical trials supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by many journals, but pre-registration has value beyond clinical trials. We will discuss pre-registration of study design and analytic plan across a range of study types, as well as strategies to improve on clinical trial registration. A data sharing plan is currently required by NIH for certain grants and is requested by some journals. We will discuss the different approaches to sharing data, and discuss the benefits and challenges of making data and analytic code available for download in a public repository, as well as discuss challenges to open access data (e.g., sensitive data). Registered reports are a journal publication format where a research project is approved for publication prior to research data being obtained. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of publishing registered reports and present the status of behavioral medicine-relevant journals with regard to offering registered report format.

Keely Muscatell, PhD., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Trained as a social neuroscientist, her research focuses on elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms that link social experiences and health. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, as she employs theory and methods from social psychology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, pharmacology, and population health. Keely completed post-doctoral training in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars program at UCSF/UC Berkeley, and in the Psychology Department at Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from UCLA in June 2013, an MA in Psychology from UCLA in 2009, and a BA in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Oregon in 2006.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the premier health research center for the nation and the world. The 27 Institutes and Centers at NIH employ approximately 18,000 employees in a vast array of jobs, all supporting efforts for a healthy nation. The NIH mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.
Located in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, the Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR) of the National Institute on Aging is a major funder of basic and translational social and behavioral research and research training on the processes of aging at both the individual and societal level and related to both normal aging and to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD).
BSR plans to hire a Health Specialist with a degree and experience in the psychological, behavioral, social, or health-related sciences, to provide scientific and logistical support to the research portfolio in BSR’s Individual Behavioral Processes Branch, in areas such as those listed below:

The program objective is to provide postdoctoral fellows who aspire to be both independent investigators and team scientists in lifestyle medicine the opportunity to develop skills in prevention and control of cardiovascular and respiratory chronic conditions translational research.

Fellows can focus their research and skill developments in either of these cores of central interest: